Tens of thousands of Somalis have already died, and tens of thousands more
risk death, the United Nations said as it laid out how the world must react
to Africa’s first famine in 27 years.

In two regions of the war-torn country, largely off-limits to international aid workers, technical criteria had now been met to officially declare famine, said Mark Bowden, the head of the United Nations operation for Somalia.

The announcement came as Oxfam accused “several” European governments of “wilful neglect” in failing to fund the estimated £650m needed to save more than 11 million Somalis, Kenyans and Ethiopians from starvation.

Italy, Denmark and France were singled out as having been “surprisingly slow” to react.

“It is time for the world to help but sadly the response from many countries has been derisory and dangerously inadequate,” said Andrew Mitchell, the International Development secretary.

“Britain is playing its part, with help for more than two million people across the Horn of Africa. Now others must do the same.”

Rates of malnutrition in parts of southern Somalia are the highest in the world, with more than half of the population in need of urgent food, according to new UN figures.

“It is likely that tens of thousands of people will have already died, the majority of them children,” Mr Bowden told a news conference in Nairobi.

“I’m not going to say it’s not going to deteriorate further, it will.

“Even if the world starts acting as it must, now, lives will be lost. But there are many more lives that can be saved if we see the level of response that is desperately needed.”

Chief among the problems facing aid workers is reaching the worst affected people with food aid.

Almost all of the three million Somalis facing famine live in areas controlled by al-Shabaab, pro-al-Qaeda Islamists who ordered aid organisations out last year.

Some agencies continue to work in the insurgents’ territory, and Mr Bowden said there was increasing “dialogue” between the international community and al-Shabaab over how to deliver relief supplies.

“Humanitarian actions in Somalia are difficult but not impossible,” he said.

The UN’s first response will be to provide people with vouchers to buy food from local traders, who agree to fix prices in markets where there is still some food available.

Due to inflation, however, without the food vouchers those goods are beyond the reach of the vast majority of the starving population.

Food deliveries will follow when security arrangements have been guaranteed.

Separately, Hillary Clinton on Wednesday announced £18m in aid for Somalia, which it is understood will pay for help for refugees and those living away from Islamist areas.

American anti-terror laws enacted after September 11 bar Washington from giving aid if there is any risk it can “materially benefit” proscribed groups like al-Shabaab. Before the new rules, the US was by far the largest international donor to Somalia.

Nicholas Haan, who helped design the official famine classification system, said, “the conditions are now there to warrant discussions on extraordinary measures, including the Responsibility to Protect”.

That demands that the UN Security Council recommends to its members, including the US, that the urgent need to save lives “over-rides any political, logistical or financial considerations,” Mr Haan said.

More than £200m is needed to address the crisis in Somalia within the next two months.

That appeal, Mr Bowden said, “will probably rise” as the numbers of people falling into famine increases.